The United States has just revealed a stunning amount of information
on some of Israel’s the most closely guarded secrets: information about
its military cooperation with America and 20 years’ worth of details on
Israel’s nuclear technology development, up to the 1980s.

The 386-page report, composed in 1987 by the federally funded
Institute for Defense Analysis, (an NGO that operates under the
Pentagon), is titled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and
NATO Nations.”

It was declassified by the Pentagon in early February – but oddly,
the report has been redacted so as to black out or withhold everything
the Institute wrote on America’s NATO allies – but to reveal all that
American experts assembled in Israel.

The news of the betrayal is only just now beginning to filter in to
Israeli media and in fact has made no headlines at all in the U.S. news
markets, where networks seem largely unaware of the tsunami that may
follow when the news sinks in at home.

Given the timing of the declassification and the selective redaction
of the report, one has to wonder about the choices that were made from
the top. But a request to publish the report was filed under the Freedom
of Information Act three years ago by American journalist Grant Smith.

One of the most revealing parts of the report states the Israelis are
“developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen
bombs.* That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a
microscopic and macroscopic level.”

The report also compared Israel’s laboratories to those at Los
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Israeli
facilities, the report stated, are “an almost exact parallel of the
capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

Finally, in some areas, Israeli scientists were apparently ahead of
the Americans; the report noted with admiration that Israeli physicists
at Rafael (research and development laboratory in Israel) had found
“ingeniously clever” solutions to difficult issues. Nevertheless, the
report maintained that Israeli scientists had not yet reached the level
of “partners”, inasmuch as they had obtained nuclear technologies “based
on extrapolations of US equipment and ideas” and that were being
produced in the United States.

However, it was found upon further investigation on site that the
Jewish State had created “a totally integrated effort in systems
development throughout the nation.” All forms of electronic combat
operated within an “integrated system, not separated systems for the
Army, Navy and Air Force.” The technology in some instances “is more
advanced than in the U.S.,” the expert reported.

*A hydrogen bomb is much more powerful than the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima in the 1940s.

About the Author:Hana Levi Julian is a
Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and
Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist
with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has
written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition
to her years working in broadcast journalism.

According to hundreds of documents from the FBI, CIA and other agencies
recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, the United
States contracted oversight of its nuclear materials stockpile to Zalman
Shapiro, president of Numec Inc., an Apollo, Pa.-based company that
U.S. intelligence suspected had ties to the newly formed Zionist
government in Palestine. Over the next 11 years, 269 kilograms of
enriched uranium were stolen from the plant in an operation guided by
four known Mossad Israeli intelligence agents: Rafael Eitan, Avraham
Ben-Dor, Ephraim Biegun and Avraham Hermoni.

Eitan went on to become the Mossad director who commandeered
intelligence operations that kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from his home in
Argentina in the 1960s. Eitan also headed the Lekem, which is a Jewish
intelligence bureau in charge of stealing nuclear secrets from the
United States and other nations. Ben-Dor was long considered Eitan’s
right-hand man, but was forced out of his position in Shin Bet in 1986
for the torture and murder of two Palestinian men in his custody.
Hermoni went on to direct “Rafael,” which was the program that developed
the Zionist nuclear bomb.

Despite warnings of potential sabotage and evidence of nuclear plants
being infiltrated, Congress and members of the Energy Department
refused to revoke Numec’s contract or view the firm as a security risk.

When CIA agents picked up radioactive material from the Numec facility
outside the Zionist nuclear plant in Dimona, Israel, further warnings
were sent that Israelis, with the help of sympathetic Zionist-Americans
in the United States, were stealing nuclear material and using it to
manufacture weapons.

The U.S. government consistently suppressed or ignored this information.

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Energy confirmed that 269 kilograms of nuclear material were stolen from the Numec facility.

In early February, the Pentagon declassified a 386-page report from 1987, exposing for the first time ever the actual depth of top-secret military cooperation between the United States and Israel — including, amazingly, information about Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear program.

In view of the caustic tension that has increased lately between Washington and Jerusalem, the timing of the publication’s declassification, after a long legal process, might raise a few eyebrows. I have some knowledge about the build-up process of Israel’s nuclear capacity and after reading the report in question I must express my astonishment: I have never seen an official American document disclosing such extensive revelation on subjects that until now were regarded by both administrations as unspeakable secrets.

The report — titled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” — describes in detail the march of Israeli military and technological advancement in the 1970s and 80s. The authors drew particular attention to the development and progression of Israel’s nuclear infrastructure and research labs.

The most surprising segment in the report states that the Israelis are “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.” In practice, this short expression confirms that in the eighties, Israeli scientists were reaching the capabilities to employ hydrogen fusion, possible creating the sort of bombs that are thought to be a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.

It should be emphasized that in the history of the relations between the two countries, there is no other published official American document that mentions in any way the Israelis development of hydrogen bombs. Moreover, the report proclaims that the labs in Israel “are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.”

Needless to say, all three of these laboratories were the principal creators of American nuclear capability. Israel’s facilities, the report reveals, are “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories”.

With all these revelations, the report is not directly stating that Israel has developed either an A-bomb or an H-Bomb, but the hints are not hidden. “As far as nuclear technology is concerned,” the report proclaims,” the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960.” The first American thermonuclear bomb (H-Bomb) was tested in 1952. Hence, a conclusion that previous to the second half of the eighties, Israel had obtained nuclear technologies that make building an H-Bomb possible is within the realm of the possible.

The report was composed by the Institute for Defense Analysis, a not-for-profit agency, which is federally funded and functions under the supervision of the Pentagon. Simultaneously, IDA’s physicists and engineers visited military labs, factories and private companies both in Israel and NATO countries. Strangely, quite a significant amount of the material that the American experts had assembled in Israel was released with this declassification, while everything that they wrote on their NATO allies has been blacked out or withheld by the Pentagon. It’s another strange aspect of this story and, along with the timing, demands further scrutiny of the defense department’s motives.

In some scientific spheres, the IDA report claims, Israeli physicists were at that time some steps ahead of the Americans. Several times in the text the report mentions the “ingeniously clever” solutions that Israeli physicists had found for complicated problems. Some of these “ingenious Israeli inventions” are ascribed in the report to the scientists of Rafael (Hebrew’s acronym of

“Authority for the Development of Armaments’), which is “a key research and development laboratory in Israel.” Still, the report asserts that the Israeli scientists were “junior partners,” who preset “technology based on extrapolations of US equipment and ideas.” How Israeli scientists could be “partners,” who obtain nuclear technologies that were produced in the States?

On this subject the report remains silent.

The American expert who made the check-up in Israel discovered “a totally integrated effort in systems development throughout the nation.” All forms of electronic combat were “integrated system, not separated systems for the Army, Navy and Air Force.” The technology in some instances “is more advanced than in the U.S.,” the expert wrote.

The request to publish the report was initiated three years ago by the American journalist Grant Smith. His plea was based on the Freedom of Information Act and while the Pentagon had lingered Smith filed a lawsuit. A District Court judge for the District of Columbia compelled the Pentagon to address his request.

Although the report reveals quite a wide compilation of new facts about Israel’s most covert defense industry, to my astonishment its declassification produced no media reverberation whatsoever, not in Israel (except on the Ynet news website), nor in the States. The mainstream Israeli media was probably busy with the dramatic election campaign and in the United States only the progressive weekly magazine, The Nation, and quite a few professional websites and blogs — some of them explicitly anti-Israel — showed any interest.

In the light of Iran’s nuclear talks, the declassification’s timing could prove troublesome for Israel. It makes it much harder to maintain the policy of ambiguity about Israel’s nuclear program and, subsequently, helps Iran’s argument that it shouldn’t be denied its own ambitions

A declassified report by the US Defense Department reveals that Washington helped Israel develop a hydrogen bomb, in violation of international law. The 1987 report said Israel’s nuclear sites had the technology base required to design and produce nuclear weapons. It said top Israeli nuclear facilities were equivalent to laboratories that played a key role in the development of US nuclear arsenal. Washington has been criticized for covering up the report for over two and a half decades. US federal laws prohibit foreign aid to those who import nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards. Israel has long defied calls to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and is believed to have hundreds of nuclear warheads.

Commentary –Back
in February the Defense Department finally granted a three-year-old
request under the Freedom of Information Act to release a 1987 report
discussing Israel’s nuclear technology. Grant Smith of the Institute for
Research: Middle Eastern Policy filed the request in 2012. As can be
seen from the two articles below, the release of the report was covered
in a variety of outlets, yet the story never gained any traction.

Meanwhile, the Zio media has reported 24/7 on Iran’s nuclear
program, which has never produced a single explosive and is monitored
above and beyond the requirements of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Even with Netanyahu crashing Washington with the help of
Congressional Republicans and the possibility of a new nuclear deal with
Iran the talk of the town, this most fundamental bit of relevant
information — Israel’s decades old acquisition of nuclear and hydrogen weapons, is conveniently left out of the discussion.

The US government blows the lid off Israel’s nuclear weapons program by declassifying a top secret document, a report says.

Last month the United States released documentation from its 1987
assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities, following a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Jerusalem Post reported on
Saturday.

The 386-page document, formally titled Critical Technological
Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, was commissioned by the
Department of Defense and complied by Leading Technologies Incorporated.

According to the report, the document gives a detailed breakdown of Israel’s nuclear weapons development in the 1970s and 1980s.

Israel is “developing the kind of codes which will enable
them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and
fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” reads the
declassified document.

It goes on to say that in the 1980s Israel was “reaching
the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful
than atom bombs.”

It also parallels Israel’s nuclear research laboratories to US nuclear facilities known to carry out weapons research.

Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant, pictured in 2004 (Getty Images)

The Soreq and Dimona nuclear facilities “are the equivalent of our
Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” it
reads.

“The Soreq center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration, and non-destructive testing to electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety,” the paper goes on to say. “This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

The Dimona Nuclear Research Center as viewed from satellite (Photographed by American reconnaissance satellite KH-4 CORONA, from Wikipedia)

In accordance to FOIA regulations, the United States informs the relevant partner giving them the option of formal objection.
The Jerusalem Post quoted US Army Col. Steven Warren, the director of
Pentagon press operations, as saying that Israel was informed of “our
planned release of the documents and they did not object.”

The release of the document is thought to be the first time the
United States has publicly acknowledged Israel’s possession of nuclear
weapons.

The Israeli regime, widely believed to possess between 200 to 400
nuclear warheads in its arsenals, refuses to either allow inspections of
its nuclear facilities or join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Document summarizes in detail Washington’s
understanding of the nature and purpose of Israel’s nuclear program as
it stood in the 1980s.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Last month, the US released documentation from
1987 of its assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities,
required to do so by law after receiving a request filed under the
Freedom of Information Act.The document, “Critical Technological
Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” was written by Leading
Technologies Inc. for the Institute for Defense Analyses, and
commissioned by the US Department of Defense. Its contents are based on
visits by US experts, in coordination with the embassy in Tel Aviv and
with the guidance of the Pentagon, to facilities and laboratories across
Israel.While Israel has never publicly acknowledged having nuclear
weapons, foreign sources say it does. Israel is not a signatory of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.This document summarizes in detail
Washington’s understanding of the nature and purpose of that program as
it stood in the 1980s.

Two of Israel’s nuclear facilities at the time, the Soreq Nuclear
Research Center near Yavne and the Negev Nuclear Research Center in
Dimona, “are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and
Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” the US document reads.

“The Soreq center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from
engineering, administration, and nondestructive testing to
electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and
nuclear research and safety,” the paper continues.

“This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

The report goes on to detail Israel’s experimentation with various
nuclear fuels, laserbased nuclear weapons detonation devices and the
effects of radiation propagation.

While the assessment concluded that, at the time, Israel’s weapons
design was “extremely conservative,” it said the Jewish state was
experimenting with coding “which will enable them to make hydrogen
bombs.”

The document appears to have been categorized as “declassified” upon
its submission, suggesting an assessment within the US government that
its findings would be low-impact if made public.

That, too, must have been the assessment of the Israeli government in
2014, as it had the opportunity to keep the document secret but
declined.

“We did inform the Israeli government of our planned release of the
documents and they did not object,” US Army Col. Steven Warren, director
of Pentagon press operations, confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.

Upon receiving a Freedom of Information Act request concerning
information sensitive to foreign governments, the US informs the
relevant partner, giving it the opportunity to formally object.

“The US government was by law required to release the report upon
such a FOIA request unless we had a written request from the relevant
foreign government – Israel – that the information continue to be
withheld,” one senior administration official told the Post on Friday.
“Israel did not object to the release of this information.”

Israeli officials declined to comment for this report, neither
confirming nor denying concerns over the document, the contents of its
assessment or the politics surrounding its release.

While the Freedom of Information Act request was made years ago, the
release of the document was first discussed in recent months – in the
shadow of debate over Iran’s nuclear weapons work.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called at the United Nations for
a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, suggesting that his country’s
nuclear program may be in response to Israel’s own.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adamantly opposes a working
proposal under discussion here in Switzerland that would aim to cap,
restrict, monitor and roll back much of Tehran’s nuclear program for a
limited period. The deadline for a framework agreement in those
negotiations falls on Tuesday.

Privately, those who acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons program
tout its effect as a deterrent. Israel’s program is understood to have
been developed in the late 1960s, after the young country had already
been at war with the forces of eight Arab nations.

The Israeli government fears that Iran’s program serves a different
purpose: Not deterrence, but embodiment of aggressive behavior and the
protection of a regime that calls for the destruction of the Jewish
state.

The Iranian government says its right to develop homegrown nuclear
technology – guaranteed by the United Nations – is a point of national
pride.

Conservative Israeli and American media, including Fox News, the
Drudge Report and The Washington Examiner, have suggested that the
timing of the document’s release was an intentional move by the Obama
administration to undermine Netanyahu.

The document was indeed released when Israel’s concerns over an Iran
deal were first raised at high pitch. The White House considers
Netanyahu’s behavior, including his March 3 speech to a joint meeting of
Congress attacking Obama’s Iran policy, as disrespectful of the
presidency and a politicization of the US-Israel relationship.

US President Barack Obama does not review Freedom of Information Act
requests, nor does any president, for unclassified documents.

While Israel has not discussed the document or its release, one
official did acknowledge that discussion over the matter began in 2014.

Prof Michel Chossudovsky for Global Research, April 15, 2015The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), an entity on contract
to the US Department of Defense has released a previously classified
military document which confirms Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

This is considered to be a landmark decision, widely interpreted
as constituting a semi-official recognition by the US Department of
Defense that Israel is a bona fide nuclear power. While the document
confirms what is already known regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the
political implications are potentially far-reaching, particularly in
relation to the ongoing negotiations pertaining to Iran’s alleged
nuclear program.”

Who Threatens Whom in the Middle East:

A de facto acknowledgement by the US that Israel is a nuclear
power threatening the Middle East in contrast to Iran’s non-existant
nuclear weapons program

Moreover, as detailed below, the IDA report tacitly portrays
Israel’s nuclear weapons program as an extension of that of the United
States.

This 386-page 1987 report entitled “Critical Technological
Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” provides details regarding
Israel’s weapons systems including the development of the hydrogen bomb.

While the report was written 28 years ago, it confirms Israel’s
capabilities to develop nuclear weapons, with an explosive capacity
equivalent to 1000 times a (Hiroshima) atomic bomb:

that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.

The report also states that:

“[Israel is] developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. [1980s] That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,”.

The report also notes that research laboratories in Israel “are
equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge
National Laboratories,” the key labs in developing America’s nuclear
arsenal. (quoted in Israel National News, March 25, 2015)

Israel’s nuclear infrastructure is ”an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories,”

The report intimates that Israel’s weapons industry including its
nuclear program is essentially an extension of that of the US, developed
with the active support and collaboration of US military research labs
and US “defense contractors”.

In this regard it also dispels the notion that the US was not made
privy to Israeli classified information concerning its nuclear program,
which in the earlier period was developed with the support of France.

The report also reveals that the Pentagon was fully informed
regarding the intimate details of the Israeli program, which also
suggests that it was developed in active collaboration with the US.

In early February, the Pentagon declassified reports
on Israel’s nuclear weapons program which was carried out until 1987.
According to these documents, Israeli scientists were capable of
producing a hydrogen bomb by that time. Although these facts were
largely ignored by the Western media, some analysts have noticed that
the declassification of these secret reports suspiciously coincided with
the recent, rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and
Israel. As Tel Aviv started a massive campaign of criticism aimed at the
Obama administration, both in the US media and worldwide, the
Pentagon’s revelations were quick to follow. It is also noteworthy that
only the facts on the Israeli nuclear weapons program were declassified,
while information regarding similar activities of NATO allies (in
particular Italy, France, and West Germany) remained locked up.

The 386 pages report “Сritical technology assessment in Israel and Nato nations,” was
prepared in 1987 by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and
examined the capabilities Israel had already had at that time to produce
nuclear weapons. In particular, the study underlines the fact that
Israel’s secret laboratories, engaged in the development of an atomic
bomb, were on par with the key research nuclear arsenals of the US: Los
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

According to this report, by the mid-80s Israeli experts
were at the same stage of research and development of various nuclear
weapons the hydrogen bomb in particular, reached by American scientists
between 1955-1960. IDA experts were courageous enough to recognize that
in certain areas the Israelis have even surpassed their American
colleagues of the time, in particular those working in the “Raphael”
Israeli secret lab, who had managed to propose unconventional ways of
achieving nuclear fission that would have allowed them to create their
own version of the hydrogen bomb.

Under these conditions, one should revisit The Sunday
Times article “Revealed: The Secrets of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal” that
was published on October 5, 1986. This article was based on the
revelations of an Israeli nuclear scientist – Mordechai Vanunu – who
disclosed the secrets of the Israeli nuclear program.

This 31 year-old Israeli expert on nuclear weapons had, by 1986,
already been working for 10 years in a secret atomic center, Machon 2,
that was built under the Negev desert and from the mid-60s had already
been producing nuclear weapons. Then, facts and pictures that were
presented by Mordechai to international experts caught them by surprise.
They had to admit that by the mid-80s Israel became the sixth nuclear
power after the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China,
although it did its best to conceal this information. Even by that time
the Israeli nuclear potential was much higher than that of India,
Pakistan and South Africa, which were also suspected of developing
nuclear weapons.

According to this
whistle-blowing Israeli scientist, by the mid-80s the Jewish state had
secret capabilities of plutonium production for more than 20 years,
which would eventually reach over the years to the level of 40 kilograms
annually, which is enough to produce 10 nuclear bombs. During the 80s,
Israel also came into possession of equipment necessary for the
production of thermonuclear devices. In particular, a French built
reactor with a capacity of 26 megawatts was upgraded by Israeli
scientists to reach a capacity of 150 megawatts, which allowed Israel to
engage in the production of plutonium.

Nuclear
specialists, which were commenting on this article in the The Sunday
Times, confirmed that by 1986 Israel could have had 100-200 nuclear
bombs.

This information provides a
reasonable understanding of Israel’s commitment to maintaining a nuclear
monopoly in the Middle East at whatever cost by blocking their
potential adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons. In particular, Tel
Aviv recklessly launched air strikes on the Osirak nuclear reactor in
Iraq on June 7, 1981, and is now followed by a likewise negative
approach toward the Iranian nuclear program.

In light of these
publications and official US recognition of Israel as a nuclear power
that has been in possession of nuclear devices for more than half a
century, it is imperative for international players to begin a
discussion of this issue in the UN, forcing Israel to sign the Treaty on
the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and taking the shipment of
such weapons in and out Tel Aviv under rigid international control.

Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

For US, Israel’s nuclear arsenal is the elephant in the room
(Note; TLDR notes can be found at the bottom of the article)

In order to hold a sound debate, it is said, opposing sides must first
have an agreed-upon set of facts, a common view of what constitutes
reality. It’s no surprise, then, that debates about nuclear arms in the
Middle East – including over Iran’s contentious nuclear programme – tend
to run amok.

In this case, the reality in the region is that only one country,
Israel, maintains a stockpile of the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Despite this being exposed in 1986 by an Israeli whistle-blower,
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel has never acknowledged its arsenal, estimated
to be between 80 and 200 bombs. In what has since become the official
line on its nukes, then-deputy defence minister Shimon Peres told US
president John Kennedy in 1963: “Israel will not be the first to
introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East” – leveraging an almost
comically narrow definition of the word “introduce”.

More curiously, Israel’s main backer, the United States, won’t
acknowledge reality either. Since a late-1960s agreement with Israel, US
officials, ranging from members of Congress to nuclear scientists, are
barred from publicly acknowledging Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Last year,
an analyst at a US government nuclear lab lost his job after mentioning
Israel’s nukes in an academic journal article.

That ridiculous dynamic, however, may be giving way to tacit
acknowledgement. A quiet shift occurred recently when the US defence
department released a previously classified 1987 report on Israel’s
nuclear research. It came to light as part of a Freedom of Information
lawsuit by Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern
Policy.

Issued by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defence Analysis (IDA), the
report suggests US complicity in Israel’s development of its nuclear
capabilities. William Greider, writing for The Nation magazine, reported
that the IDA’s findings “seem to hint at a copy-cat process in which
the US government either actively helped or at least looked the other
way while Israel borrowed or purloined technologies to establish a
parallel nuclear system that looks a lot like America’s”.

The report doesn’t state outright that Israel has the bomb, but
describes in detail an Israeli nuclear infrastructure of immense
proportions.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Israel. Tensions with the US are high
and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is feverishly working every lever
of influence in America to block a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

Israel is the world’s most outspoken critic of Iran’s nuclear programme
and a vociferous opponent of the diplomacy between Iran and world
powers, including the US, to peacefully constrain that programme.

Israel persistently calls for heightened transparency with regard to
Iran’s programme – for example, by denouncing the reported deal on the
table now for not going far enough. But what one academic calls “nuclear
opacity” stands as a weak spot in Israel’s activism on Iran. Avner
Cohen has said the policy is “anachronistic, even counterproductive”;
indeed, the Iranians haven’t shied away from exploiting the hypocrisy as
a propaganda cudgel against their regional foes.

After Mr Netanyahu’s speech to US Congress earlier this month, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani lashed out at the contradiction.
“People of the world and America are too smart to take advice from
[Israel],” he said, “which has pursued, produced and stockpiled a large
number of atomic bombs in violation of international laws and away from
the eyes of international inspectors.” Iran, he noted, is – unlike
Israel – a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Because of its complicity in keeping Israel’s nuclear secret, the US
takes a propaganda hit, too. Not least of the US aims at stake is that
of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East. While Africa, Latin
America, the South Pacific, South-east Asia and Central Asia have agree
to go nuke-free, one of the world’s most explosive regions can’t even
kick-start its conversation because of Israel’s posture.

A planned 2012 conference aimed at creating such a zone reportedly
collapsed because of Israel’s refusal to participate. Iran, again,
gained the upper hand in its propaganda war by agreeing to join the
effort (though only when it already appeared the talks wouldn’t
proceed).

But Iran’s point scoring isn’t the only cost: talks toward a nuke-free
zone that included Israel would’ve been a milestone not just for
non-proliferation in a dangerous region, but also Israel’s efforts to
gain diplomatic relations with its neighbours. A region-wide conference
including Israel would have been unprecedented, amounting to de facto
recognition.

In this regard and others, Israel has created a Catch-22 with “nuclear
opacity”. Last year, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington
noted: “Israel supports a Middle East free of all weapons of mass
destruction following the attainment of peace.” And yet Israel’s nuclear
weapons are among the reasons the larger international community views
it as a pariah state.

Would a more bold US acknowledgement of Israel’s nukes help Israel in
its goals of regional recognition and international acceptance? The
answer is not clear. It would, however, certainly remove America’s
complicity in Israel’s obfuscation of clear realities. US officials,
after all, not Israelis, have to sit across from the Iranians at the
negotiating table.

Indeed, the US has its own imperatives. Abiding by Israel’s policy of
“opacity” hurts America’s credibility in pursuing its own aims of
international non-proliferation. The US position, as the former CIA
analyst Paul Pillar put it, is “not just a double standard but living a
lie”.

One can’t help but regard the US’s own commitment to non-proliferation
as something of a joke when, for example, Barack Obama answered a 2009
question about Israel’s nuclear programme by saying: “With respect to
nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate.”

The logic behind “nuclear opacity” – that acknowledging Israeli nuclear
weapons would lead to a rush among Middle Eastern countries for their
own bombs – has long since become irrelevant. If Israel’s enemies were
going to move towards acquiring nuclear arsenals, it would not be
because of Israel’s public recognition of something that they already
knew two decades ago.

There’s no upside of Israel maintaining its ambiguous posture, only
costs such as Israel’s isolation and damage to US credibility. The
recently released Pentagon report is only a chink in the armour, but the
candour is welcome. It’s time the US stopped participating in this
farce.

Important Note

The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 was amended by the Symington
Amendment (Section 669 of the FAA) in 1976. It banned U.S. economic, and
military assistance, and export credits to countries that deliver or
receive, acquire or transfer nuclear enrichment technology when they do
not comply with IAEA regulations and inspections. This provision, as
amended, is now contained in Section 101 of the Arms Export Control Act
(AECA).

The Glenn Amendment (Section 670) was later adopted in 1977, and
provided the same sanctions against countries that acquire or transfer
nuclear reprocessing technology or explode or transfer a nuclear device.
This provision, as amended, is now contained in Section 102 of the Arms
Export Control Act (AECA).

In short, it is illegal under US law for The Federal Government to be sending aid to Israel.

TLDR Notes

- Israel has pursued, produced and stockpiled a large
number of atomic bombs in violation of international laws and away from
the eyes of international inspectors.

The UN General Assembly approved an Arab-backed resolution calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight. The resolution, adopted in a 161-5 vote on Tuesday, noted that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It called on Israel to "accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons". The resolution also called on Israel to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States and Canada were among four countries that joined Israel in opposing the measure, while 18 countries abstained, the Associated Press reported. Israel is widely considered to possess nuclear arms but declines to confirm it. Non-binding resolution General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but carry moral weight because it is the only body where all 193 UN member states are represented. The resolution was introduced by Egypt, and includes an Arab-backed effort that failed to gain approval in September at the Vienna-based IAEA. The UN resolution, titled "The risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East," pushed for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and lamented that US-backed efforts to convene talks were abandoned in 2012. At the time, Israel criticised Arab countries for undermining dialogue by repeatedly singling out the country in international arenas. Israel has long argued that a full Palestinian-Israeli peace plan must precede any creation of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The country also argues that Iran's alleged work on nuclear arms is the real regional threat. Iran denies pursuing such weapons. US representative Robert Wood, in voting against the resolution at the committee-level last month, said the measure "fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.

Iran’s claim that Israel has 400 nuclear weapons “It’s laughable that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has
become everybody’s nonproliferation guru. He is sitting on 400 nuclear
warheads, nuclear warheads that have been acquired in violation of the
NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].”

Netanyahu warns that nuclear deal ‘paves Iran’s path’ to a bomb | March 3 2015 Publicly, Israel neither confirms nor denies that it has nuclear weapons. But many experts in nuclear arms believe that Israel has extensive capabilities. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a disgruntled Israeli technician at a suspected nuclear facility, leaked photos to a British newspaper that led foreign experts to conclude that Israel had a large nuclear arsenal. Israeli intelligence agents later arrested Vanunu in Rome.

The truth about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal Israel has been stealing nuclear secrets and covertly making bombs since the 1950s. And western governments, including Britain and the US, turn a blind eye. But how can we expect Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions if the Israelis won't come clean? 15 January 2015